When Good Training Goes Bad

The title to my post today may seem a bit arse about face, but its what happened last night.

Wednesday night is a 2.5hr road ride, with one decent climb, two smaller climbs and the remainder is flat. Either 2 or 3 of us head out on these rides. I've been heading along for about the last month.

When I started back I let the others take off on the hill, but everyweek I have been feeling a little better. However last night was something else. I've been a touch stressed with getting everything done, and this has been effecting my training a bit. Yest I seemed to release from that stress and everything clicked.

I was feeling great, riding on the front the whole time, climbing so well I dropped the others without trying and still riding steady.
It was raining however, and I hadn't bought quite enough clothes along. On descending the big hill (~10min descent) I was cold. Then about 5km later I had a flat. Stopped to change it, the others continued to ride as it was a little out and back. After a long time changing an inner with cold hands, I pumped it up to find it had a hole. So I used my other spare, but broke the valve off. So after 10min jumping around trying to stop shivering, the others rocked up, used one of their spares and we were off again.

I hammered up over the little hill, and was back on the front on the flat feeling great. When I got another flat. Arse. Andrew and John must've thought I was bad luck. I called Elin and she came and picked me up.

It felt great to be riding so efortlessly, but was a touch average to flat so many times then need a ride home!

Have a photo session with Nelson Mail tonight for the next article. Pretty lol.